Posted
by
Soulskill
on Wednesday December 23, 2009 @01:32PM
from the hope-you're-good-at-regolith-farming dept.

News of the upcoming NASA MMO, Astronaut: Moon, Mars, and Beyond, has been scarce since its announcement in 2008, but NASA recently revealed that a "mini demo game" is coming in January that will show off some of what they've completed so far. "Moon Base Alpha utilizes actual NASA Constellation program design details developed by NASA for mankind’s return to the Moon in 2020. Timelines in the much anticipated Astronaut: Moon, Mars and Beyond MMO will be set even farther in the exciting future (2035+), but the ability to explore our own near-future moon missions is also planned for in the forthcoming game facilitated by the NASA Learning Technologies and Innovative Partnerships Programs." They're provided a slideshow and a brief video, and one of the developers spoke about the game with Edge last month.

Now we can pretend we are following Bush's Space Exploration Vision with only a fraction of the funny money allocated;)

It's cute how you think there was any money allocated for it in the first place. But don't let that stop you from making fun at those gosh-darned dumb wasteful NASA bureaucrats for being unable to fulfill dozens of contradictory unfunded mandates.

The reason NASA is developing public relations stuff like this is because it's essentially the only thing they are allowed to do--almost all of their real science is hamstrung by the whims of congresscritters, whose only interest is in ensuring that NASA is required to funnel their scarce funding into the private contractors in their individual states and districts.